A Meeting of the Ways
by Scribbler
Summary: [one shot] Mississippi, 1994. Raven Darkholme, the woman more famous as Mystique, finds old ghosts need confronting on a botched mission that leads her into the home of an old ally. [RavenIrene]


Disclaimer ~ Not mine. I am but a humble fan wishing to pay homage. I am the proverbial foot – shoot me at your peril.  
  
A/N ~ While this is an entry for Nemain's Femslash Contest, it actually has it origins in last October, after I'd finished writing 'Be My Eyes' and, to a lesser extent, 'Snapshot of a Charlatan'. At the time, I had an overwhelming urge to write about Mystique as she was during the 'lost years' – the part of the Evo timeline between losing Kurt, adopting Rogue, and the beginning of Season One. However, for various convoluted reasons, the idea went on the back burner until Nemain launched her contest, whereupon I resurrected the idea in a shameless attempt to win a prize. Mercenary, me? Well…   
  
So far as chronology is concerned, I'm taking it as red that Rogue and Kurt were about 17 when the show ended in 2004, and making any and all calculations from there.  
  
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'A Meeting of the Ways' By Scribbler  
  
April 2004  
  
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[November 1984]  
  
An unremitting rain fell from the night sky onto the little pocket of houses, deep in the heart of Mississippi. Each house, designed primarily for dealing with southern heat and aridity, instead faced the onslaught of what the inhabitants referred to as 'a gullywasher'. To their credit, the buildings handled it well, but since the clouds had rolled in that morning and unleashed their contents at noon, by now all drains and water barrels were pushed to cope with the unseasonable weather.   
  
Most sensible people were indoors, curled up in their armchairs and watching one of 999 channels. Most sensible people had bolted their windows and brought out spare buckets, just in case the roof couldn't cope after all. Most sensible people had cleared out of the tiny alleys between the even tinier fenced-in yards, where drains gurgled after five minutes of a light drizzle and to stand still was to risk being washed away.  
  
Raven Darkholme was not most sensible people.   
  
She'd vaulted a hedge three gardens back, had a slight run in with a garden gnome that was now missing its head, and bulled her way through possibly the biggest rhododendron bush known to man to get to where she was now – all in the kind of driving rain that made her wish more of her missions took place in the desert.   
  
At the corner of the last yard in the chain of triple-wides she paused, hand resting against the fence. A telltale spot just below her ribcage ached, pain spiking when she moved, and she took a moment to collect her breath before bracing her grip and pulling herself over in a thoroughly gymnastic move. She landed lightly, but seized her side nonetheless, panting hard.  
  
There was no time for further pause. Stumbling only a little, she raked herself over the small playground. The swing-set rocked under the force of the rain, and water bounced high off the metal slide. The teeter-totter had been broken years ago by high school kids and a selection of fireworks, and somehow the local authorities had never scrounged up enough money to fix it, despite residents' outrage. Briefly, Raven skimmed her eyes over the place, gauging her position and how far she had left to go.  
  
She couldn't totally ignore the pain, but with typical mulishness she refused to let it stop her progress. The logical part of her brain had got her this far, but it was also telling her that one scuffle was not to be the end of her troubles this night. The Hand was nothing if not thorough, and a single loss meant nothing once they'd set their collective will to something.   
  
A dazzle of lightning cut the sky in two. Seconds later, thunder followed, champing on its heels. The rain seemed to fall harder, faster, and had she not known better she would have sworn there were pieces of glass in each drop.   
  
She'd relinquished her borrowed form as soon as she entered the housing development. Usually she could shift herself out of minor injuries, her flesh knitting itself back together between shapes. It was a plus point of shapeshifting – accelerated healing in exchange for blue skin and bizarre hair that only the colour-blind could love. With more serious wounds it took longer, but the basic premise was the same. All she needed was a bit of time and privacy to repair herself, but the initial shift took the edge off.   
  
However, this time had been different. For some unknown reason, the wounds she'd received had remained despite several shifts. Altering her shape too many times without respite drained her, and so she'd concentrated her efforts on reaching a place safe enough for Erik to send one of his collection devices. Much as it galled her to think it, perhaps he knew what was wrong with her powers.  
  
She bumped into a bench that surely hadn't been that close before. Cursing under her breath, Raven eyed the shadows, fully aware of just how dangerous they could be with the Hand around. She'd tussled with their order once before over a lesser matter. That time she had emerged victorious, but the price had been high and the lesson garnered a sober one. You did *not* mess with the Hand unless you were sure you could win, were ready to give up what they wanted, or had a plot in a graveyard already paid for. With an injury like this she couldn't depend totally on the first option, but she had no desire to join the ancient former residents of Erik's castle in their tomb – which may well be her fate if she allowed either of the other two alternatives to come about.   
  
She took a step.   
  
Movement to her left. She'd fallen into a defensive stance before the figure finished detaching itself from the gloom, hands out and grabbing fistfuls of black, loose-fitting uniform to send it sailing over her head. Rolling backwards, she came up quickly, a sudden rush of adrenaline washing away the equally sudden aggravation of her injuries.   
  
The Hand operative already had his weapon unsheathed. His sword traced a deadly arc over his head as he doubled back and advanced on his target. She'd gotten the drop on him through no more than sheer luck, but experience told them both there would be no repeat of that.   
  
Like all operatives, he wore a hood; meaning Raven couldn't read his face for signs of his next move. The rain made things doubly difficult, obscuring her vision and generally making combat conditions demanding. She braced her feet nonetheless, allowing him to power forward, then sidestepped the strike to grip his shirtfront, turn and propel him backwards over the broken teeter-totter.   
  
The minor distraction this provided allowed her to bend and reach into her boot. Erik's idea of mission-wear involved less fabric than she might've liked, but the thick boots were perfect places to hide an array of weaponry. True, she'd already exhausted most of it tonight, but the thirty-eight was still good, and she drew it just as the operative sprang toward her.   
  
Raven leapt backwards, narrowly avoiding a sword cut. She landed not three feet from the foot of the slide, bringing the gun up to fire round after round at the onrushing attacker.   
  
It might have just been her difficulty in seeing through the rain, but he seemed to move faster than even the bullets, dodging with unnaturally fluid grace. She moved backwards and fired again, losing her composure for a second and aiming blindly, but he shunned it just as easily. When the sword appeared in her peripheral vision, Raven all but threw herself sideways like the most inept of rookies. The clang of metal on metal signalled that the blow meant for her had hit the slide, and she rolled onto her back to flip to her feet.  
  
Her side screamed, as the muscles beneath twisted and worked. Something warmer than rain was running down her hip, but Raven has less than no time to consider long-term damage in the immediate conundrum of how to keep herself alive against the swordsman. Hand operatives were famed as tenacious – the terriers of the assassin world. They were also famed as the best at what they did. Silent, fast and invariably deadly; their training, refined for hundreds of years, had been perfect. This fight would see only one of them walk away.  
  
Raven knew her bullets wouldn't last forever, and there was neither time nor provision to reload. When several more rounds did no damage, she let her gun arm drop and stood, as if waiting for the finishing blow. Her head drooped, her posture sagged with the fatigue of two consecutive battles with operatives, and when the assassin bore down on her she did nothing to stop him. She didn't even throw up her arms, but permitted him to whip his sword in a savage undercut intended to open her abdomen from hip to hip.   
  
It should have been an incapacitating strike. It might even have killed her, if not right away. However, to the assassin's astonishment, Raven mirrored his own speed and closed the gap between them first with a vicious backhand, followed almost immediately by a spinning kick. The hand connected solidly with his cheek, throwing him off balance. The kick impacted his knuckles, shattering at least one and sending the sword careening into the wet grass surrounding the playground.   
  
The assassin fell backwards, but turned the stumble into a battle stance Raven was all too familiar with. It was one of the first she'd ever learned, when she started her deal with the devil and began living out her side of the bargain with Erik. Months spent training in the draughty catacombs of his Bavarian stronghold, devising new kata and perfecting fighting styles she already knew had forged her into what she was today – as much a living weapon as the result of centuries' combat culture now stood before her.   
  
The operative didn't even try to waste time reaching his sword. Instead, he leaped at Raven in a spinning kick akin to her own. It was aimed at her head, and though she saw it coming, had been prepared for it, it was only instinct that saved her from the blow. She darted her head to one side and dodged the foot by a scant half-inch. With her free hand, she seized the assassin's ankle and used his own momentum to reverse the direction of the kick, twisting him onto the floor. His shoulder struck the pitted asphalt hard, but even as Raven moved in on him he rolled, swung his foot out and swept her legs from under her.   
  
As she fell, Raven spun and threw her body forward. She ducked her head, went into a roll and came up inches shy of the swing-set. Rain cascaded from her hair, as she flung her head back to see, and some distant part of her wondered why nobody had come out of their manufactured homes to see what all the commotion was about. True, this neighbourhood wasn't exactly the safest in the world, but gunshots should have sent at least one person scurrying to dial 911. Not that she really wanted the police involved, but still, she wondered. Were folk these days really so blasé that they wouldn't tear themselves away from Family Fortunes to investigate a life or death struggle on the porch?  
  
The assassin was already there. As Raven rose, he snapped a kick at her upper torso. She couldn't avoid it, though she tried. Something in her chest cracked and all the breath fled her lungs. The momentum sent her backwards, and she crashed into the seat of one of the swings, half expecting it to break apart beneath her. It didn't, and automatically she hooked an arm over to lever herself up.   
  
Her ribcage grated painfully when she moved, but she forced herself to her feet regardless. The wound in her side had torn open further with all the activity but she ignored the incisive pain, so superficial compared to the burning in her chest when she breathed. Her feet slid slightly on the wet blacktop, and she gripped the chain of the swing to steady herself.   
  
Still silent, the Hand assassin projected a straightforward kick at his target. Raven had counted on him believing that her chest injury had caused her to put all her weight on the hand clutching the chain. The uncomplicated move signalled that he had bought it.   
  
Releasing the chain, she stopped his leg mid-swing, folds of fabric compressing under her palm. Then she shoved him backwards, letting the force of the motion drive her own backside into the plastic seat. Braced thus, Raven had enough support to elevate both legs and plant her feet squarely against his chest, thrusting outward with all her strength to topple him completely. When her knees locked there was a satisfying crunch, and she acknowledged the irony of an injury repaid in kind.   
  
The assassin flailed at the rain-washed air, unprepared for the ferocious abandon of the attack and unable to spin out of the fall even with his speed. Raven was up and launching her heels to stamp on his midsection before he'd even hit the ground, but he rotated his body enough that she missed and sprang to his feet with a dancer's grace.   
  
The chop came from the arm with the broken knuckle, followed in close succession by the other. Raven met it with her forearms in such a way as they immediately locked together in a physical impasse. Muscles shrieked and strained, but both buttressed themselves against the other in a veritable tableau of combative aplomb.   
  
The assassin muscled in close, glaring into Raven's too-pale eyes. As they had become locked further in battle he had lost some of the Hand's fastidiously cultivated air of detached professionalism. When Raven relieved him of his sword it had intensified, but only now that she could see his eyes up close did she understand the reason for it. For him, this fight had progressed beyond simple orders. Honour was on the line. It was getting personal.   
  
"[You are good, gaijin,]" he whispered in Japanese, his voice not at all unlike the splintering of dry bones.   
  
Raven had spent some years in Japan during her long-lasting youth – enough to understand and speak the rudiments of the language, if not always be precisely grammatically correct. "[I'm the best,]" she hissed back minimally.  
  
"[You are mistaken. You shall never outshine the brightness of the Hand's star. Give us what we desire and I shall make your end swift. Refuse, and you shall know the torment of a thousand deaths before you are allowed to leave this world, and I shall take our prize from your corpse.]"  
  
"[Hmm, tough decision]." Raven curled her upper lip, blinking raindrops from her eyelashes. She reverted back to English, not caring whether her understood her every word or not. "Do the words 'fat effin' chance' translate properly?"  
  
Evidently, the assassin did understand. "[You make your choice and I honour it]," he replied, driving the point of a spiked kneepad up into Raven's thigh.   
  
The screech of pain that exploded from her was so startling, so ill-suited to a human being, that it shook even this hardened killer. His composure shattered, if only for a moment, and before he could recover and press his advantage Raven shot forward and barrelled into him.   
  
It was a brute's move, with no finesse, no precision and no elegance, but it worked. She used her entire bodyweight to ram the assassin backwards, though the impact drove the air from her lungs again, and the fire of pain from her cracked ribs flared so bright it sent sparks up to flicker in front of her eyes.   
  
The assassin swung his open hand forward in a palm strike that drove into Raven's shoulder with expert accuracy. It dislocated with a loud pop and an excruciating rip.   
  
The sparks coalesced into black spots that clouded her already murky vision, but she knew that was just pain and not weather conditions. Being whom she was, doing what she did, pain was something Raven could deal with. She could overcome it and carry on, even if she usually just shifted her way out of it. There had been a time when shifting was not an option, and she called on those memories now.   
  
The pain revitalised her senses, sharpening them. It woke her up.  
  
It pissed her off.   
  
However, before she could react, the assassin got in a quick shot to the face. Her nose broke and blood flowed into her mouth.   
  
Raven reeled, jumping away from the next blow. Her dislocated arm hung slackly by her side, and she transferred the focus of her attack, popping her assailant with a savage head-butt. Stunned, he staggered no more than three steps. Then he readied himself for a jaw-breaking kick.   
  
Raven fired the forgotten pistol. The range was point-blank, and pure, dumb luck had ensured the dislocated arm was not that of her gun-hand.   
  
For a second the assassin looked startled – although whether at his failure to remember she had the weapon, or at the brand new hole in his chest was uncertain. He froze, eyes ticking downward, then back up again to her face. Raven schooled her features into an impassive mask, keeping her arm extended in case he tried anything.  
  
He didn't.  
  
The body flopped forward with a vague splat. An undercurrent of almost-hysteria pointed out that bodies are not supposed to sound that way, but Raven ignored it. She waited a few moments, sights trained on the carcass. When it didn't move, she tossed sopping hair from her eyes and fired on it again. It jerked once, and then lay totally still.   
  
When a thick black stream of vapour began to rise from beneath the hood, Raven knew that she had won. If a Hand assassin failed on a mission, they were dust. When she nudged at the body with her foot, it collapsed into a pile of empty clothes, the last of the smoke shredded by the rain.   
  
The victory was a hollow one, and short-lived. Raven staggered backwards, the raging pain of her shoulder, nose and side returning as adrenaline faded from her system. She bent with some difficulty and replaced the pistol; briefly tracing her fingers over the small pouch tucked into her other boot to make sure it was safe. All this for that little thing? If the situation weren't so nightmarishly real, she'd have thought the whole thing absurd.   
  
Yet it was real. The three deaths already done tonight made sure she knew that fact. Dead; two Hand assassins and her contact – no, Erik's contact. The one who had got him this stupid relic and paid for the business with his life.   
  
She had no idea whom in the Hand organisation could possibly want what she carried, but they were not a paid service. The Hand worked sole for the Hand and its criminal syndicate arm; therefore the only possibility for tonight's goings-on was that someone higher up had taken an interest, found out about the pick-up and acted accordingly.  
  
She didn't know, and in truth, she didn't care. Her job, as always, was just to get the thing and take it back to Erik. He'd provided transport here, would do the same to get her back once she reached the prearranged spot, and would take care of her wounds once she returned. Though there was no affection lost between the two thanks to the nature of their living arrangement, Erik was not the kind of man to let someone bleed out on the floor if he could help. Besides which, he'd just been aching for a chance to study her mutation. This would be just the opportunity he needed.  
  
Cradling her dislocated arm, Raven turned to walk away from the inappropriate choice of battlefield and ran through her immediate options. Her mind was fuggy, edges of her thoughts blurred with a combination of pain and emotional connection to the area she was in. Nonetheless, she knew that her best bet was simply to focus on getting to the collection point.   
  
However, a jolt of indescribable pain from her shoulder, and the coppery tang of blood in the back of her throat served to quickly change her mind. She was more vulnerable than ever this way, and there was every possibility that another assassin would be headed her way when the Hand realised what had happened.  
  
Fix her shoulder first, then hustle.   
  
She lurched over to the half-rusted jungle gym, which was peeling paint and flaky orange metal in equal amounts. The puddles around it ran rusty, and she knelt in one just below the tiny silver slide attached to the nearest section. All the shafts were cemented into the ground, providing adequate leverage for what she intended.   
  
With some difficulty she managed to wrap both hands around the largest, which usually served as a would-be fireman's pole. Strong hand over the weak one, holding it in place, Raven planted her feet against the slanting back of the slide, took a breath, and pushed out as hard as she could. It was an exceedingly awkward angle, but there was enough force behind it to snap the shoulder back into joint.   
  
For a second it felt as though invisible fingers were trying to slice her muscles lengthways with serrated blades, and Raven stopped the scream welling in her throat only by biting clean through her lip.   
  
Quivering with residual pain, she somehow managed to find her feet. However, they slipped out from under her almost immediately. Blaming the wet blacktop, she grabbed for an overhead shaft, hauling herself back up with the help of the jungle gym.   
  
Her entire body seemed to throb in outrage, and when she made her way out of the playground she shook her head against a sudden, violent swell of nausea and dizziness.  
  
_Maybe fixing my arm first wasn't the best idea I've ever had…_  
  
The world tilted sideways at a crazy angle. She was certain she'd stopped still to wait for it to return to normal, but somehow it just kept tilting. A deep pounding that she'd only been vaguely aware of suddenly rose to play ping-pong with her brain, bouncing it around the inside of her skull.   
  
Lethargy stole her senses and drank down her mind in a long gulp. She saw the ground coming, but she never felt it hit.   
  
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What Raven saw of the world next was relegated to a series of snapshots in her memory. So far as she was concerned, everything was a miasma of vagaries - half-heard words and indistinct images that were punctuated now and then with knifing thoughts too lucid to be part of any dream.   
  
The most frequent lapse into consciousness involved a strange voice that she did not recognise, chanting, "Naórù" over and over again. The pitch never wavered, nor did the inflection change, yet the more she heard it, the more cogent Raven felt herself becoming. It was as if her body was on fire, and the strange voice pouring liquid balm into her muscles. Too grateful for the respite from pain, she allowed herself to fall back into numbness, resurfacing and finally recalling where she'd heard that word before. It was Japanese for 'heal'.   
  
Eventually she opened her eyes fully, dragging herself from unconsciousness and back into reality with a jolt.   
  
She was inside, out of the rain and lying in a bed with creaky springs. The air tasted slightly dusty, and she got the distinct feeling that a substantial amount of time had passed since she first fell at the playground.   
  
There was a hand on her forehead, gently stroking hair from her face. The room around her was small and gloomy, and her eyes took a moment to readjust. When they did, she blinked at the familiar feathery brown hair and dark glasses, brain temporarily offline and not uploading the required mental records.   
  
Raven had been to the ends of the Earth several times, into space once to inspect progress on Erik's asteroid pipe dream, and spent countless long months locked in the backwater of a backwater repaying his 'kindness' from when she was fleeing her ex-husband's lands, and making sure he never went anywhere near where her supposedly dead son was hidden. Yet for all that, for all the memories she'd forged, she could never truly forget the face that now confronted her.  
  
"Irene?"  
  
"So, you're back among the living, now?" Irene's voice sounded tired, and there were new wrinkles on her face that Raven could not remember seeing before.   
  
At once, she felt a surge of uncharacteristic embarrassment. It had been three years since she last visited Mississippi, and in all that time she had not once attempted contact with the woman now sat by her bedside. True, when Erik announced where the pick-up of the artefact would be she had briefly considered 'dropping by', but almost immediately dismissed the idea as ludicrous. This part of her life she was now embarked upon did not involve afternoon tea with friends and relatives. In keeping her children safe from Erik she had sacrificed normalcy and the satisfaction of common living – and all the trappings and frivolities that went with it.   
  
She tried to sit up, bracing against a spiking pain that did not come. Her body was completely healed, as if from shapeshifting, replete with only the smallest of lingering tenderness in her side.  
  
Her silence must have told Irene something, because the other mutant rose from her chair and crossed the room to an old bureau. The varnish was chipped and discoloured, marking its age, and on top sat a jug and two small whisky glasses. Irene poured some clear liquid into one, not spilling a drop. Then she came back to the bed, passing it to Raven with all the sureness of a sighted person.  
  
"Here. Drink up."  
  
Raven sniffed. Water. It smelled untainted, too. She sipped at it warily.  
  
"There's no need for suspicion here, Raven. I'm not going to poison you. Aside from the chemicals pumped into the reservoirs by the government, all that's in that glass is H²0." Irene sat down, reaching to the side of her chair to briefly grasp her white cane. It was an old habit that Raven remembered well – the cane was mainly for show, since Irene habitually 'saw' the immediate future of the path in front of her, and was able to react to her surroundings accordingly, but she still liked to make sure the thing was there regardless.   
  
"How did I get here?"  
  
"A… friend brought you."  
  
"A friend?" Raven stiffened.  
  
As ever, Irene seemed to know what the change in the air meant. "She can be trusted, Raven."  
  
"A mutant?"  
  
"No, not quite. I'm not quite sure what she qualifies as. But she knows about Mutantkind. She's been around here before – quite a bit, as it happens. She turned up unexpectedly on the stoop tonight with you in her arms. I was in bed. The doorbell went, so I got up there you both were. Raven… you weren't breathing. It took everything she had to... to…"  
  
Raven blinked, recalling the strange voice from her delusions. "Am I supposed to thank her for that?"  
  
Irene inclined her head ever so slightly. To anyone else it would have been nothing more than a twitch, but to Raven it was a clear indication that the snap had surprised her. She squashed the guilt this elicited by drinking some more water. Her mouth was parched, and though she was healed physically, she felt weary beyond all reason.   
  
A new voice cut into the thick silence, causing Raven to stiffen again, ready for fight or flight.  
  
"Well, a little bit of gratitude might have been nice, but I suppose one can't hope for everything."  
  
"Who's there?" Raven said immediately, voice hard.  
  
A figure pushed open the door, which had been left ajar. The hall beyond was dark, but the silhouette was darker, and at once a sense of profound wisdom seemed to enter the room. It twisted across the floor, working its way up the bedspread and under Raven's fingernails. Her hands twitched, though there was nothing actually there, and she regarded the figure with immediate mistrust.  
  
"Raven Darkholme, I presume?"  
  
"Who're you?"  
  
"Agatha Harkness, my dear; the person who patched you up from the state you were in. You don't know me, but I've been waiting for quite some time to meet you."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
Irene turned her face from one to the other. "Agatha came to me a month ago saying she needed our help – yours and mine. I told her I didn't know who Raven Darkholme was, but she didn't believe me. When she finally convinced me to hear her out, she said that you'd need her help in the near future and that it was in your best interests to let her stay for when the time came and you needed *her*. She also said some other things – things that persuaded me she was who she said she was, and spoke the truth about why she was here."  
  
Raven narrowed her eyes, not removing them from Agatha's spindly frame. The woman was of innumerable years, with wrinkles etching every inch of her face and grey hair pulled back into a loose chignon. He clothes, what Raven could she of them, were loose and baggy. They reminded her somewhat of that ridiculous cape Erik had taken to wearing twenty-four-seven, and she screwed up her nose in distaste.   
  
"You don't like me, do you? But then again, you don't like anyone, so I shouldn't be surprised."  
  
"I don't even know you."  
  
"But you will."  
  
"Irene?" Raven left off talking to the stranger and spoke again to the other mutant. "What the hell is going on here? You let this total stranger into the house?" With Marie around, her mind added, but she pushed the thought away with mental equivalent of a drop-kick.  
  
Agatha answered instead. "You were on a mission to pick up a precious ruby tonight, were you not? The one in your left boot? You were subsequently attacked and collapsed from various wounds you couldn't heal yourself from as you usually would. I found you and brought you here, where I knew you'd be safe from the Hand while I healed you."  
  
Raven's eyes had widened at the mention of the ruby. Inwardly, she cursed herself for having forgotten it. "Nobody's safe from the Hand. That's why I wasn't going to come here in the first place."  
  
"Even though you wanted to?"  
  
"Shut up. Where's the ruby now?"  
  
"Here." A small leather pouch dangled from Agatha's outstretched hand. Even in the gloom, Raven could see that they were thin and craggy as the rest of her. "No doubt you'd like it back."  
  
"What are you, a telepath?" Raven had met a telepath once. One of Erik's old friends from America. He'd tried to persuade her that mutants and humans could live together in harmony some day, but she knew from personal experience that people had only fear and hatred for what they didn't understand. They could dress it up how they liked, and maybe sometimes there were exceptions to the rule, but there was always an undercurrent of fear in their hearts – always, and fear could quickly lead to outright hostility.   
  
Agatha actually laughed at the suggestion. "A telepath? Me? No, child, I just know more than I should about the world."  
  
"What are you then, if you're not a mutant?" Raven was half convinced she was lying. Some of the things she spoke of were known only to herself, and they were secrets she'd never willingly give up. Plus, there was the whole finding and healing her aspect of the situation to think about. How else could she have done what she claimed to have done if not via some kind of mutation?  
  
"You've seen a lot of things in your life, child, but I still seriously doubt you'd believe me if I told you," Agatha said with a sigh.   
  
"Try me."  
  
"My, you really are as cantankerous as the flames said." She shook her head and loosed another breath. "All right then. I'm a witch – practitioner of supernatural talents known to the common mind as simply 'magick'. I'm also approximately two-hundred and thirty-six years old, during which time I've become quite proficient in the use of aforementioned magickal arts – including fire reading and tarot, both of which alerted me one month ago to the need for my presence here, and which directed me to your vulnerable position in the local children's recreational area tonight."  
  
"You're lying."  
  
Agatha looked at Irene. "Didn't I tell you she'd find it difficult to believe me? And yes, dear, I know it's just her nature, but it really is an annoying pothole in the ultimate road we have to walk."  
  
Raven's eyes ticked sideways. "Irene… you don't believe this bunch of hokum, do you?"  
  
Irene dipped her head. "I foresaw her reading the fire and her initial arrival. If nothing else, she can do that like she says she can. My visions have never been wrong, Raven, you know that."  
  
Agatha passed the leather pouch from hand to hand. "Time is short. Healing you took longer than I expected, so we must keep this brief if you're to get back to Erik without further mishap. Yes, I know about him, too. Erik Lenscherr, holocaust survivor and doctor turned pre-emptive vigilante on behalf of a fledging Mutantkind; now living in a terribly draughty and needlessly gothic place somewhere in the Bavarian wilderness."  
  
"You *are* a telepath – "  
  
"No, I'm not. We've been over this." The old woman made an irritated noise and gestured wide. "Understand this, Raven Darkholme. Things are going to happen in the future – big things. Bigger than you or I can combat alone. Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant; the point is that we both need each other's help, or will do in a few years time. All I'm doing tonight is aiding you in order to aid myself. I healed you; therefore you owe me a debt. You will repay it when the time comes."  
  
"What are you talking about, you decrepit old crone?" Ravens hands bunched into fists and her eyes narrowed with dislike.  
  
Agatha tutted like an old grandmother chiding some wayward offspring. "Irene here is the precognitive one, not me. I only know what my magick tells me, and magick tends to be dreadfully vague." She spiralled her free hand at the wrist, as if it were too heavy to hold up properly. "Something about a young girl with immense but uncontrolled power in need of guidance, and a great evil rising. Don't think too much of the latter, though. That sort of thing features in a great many visions, and to magick a 'great evil' can be as simple as a toaster on the blink. Do you know why you couldn't shapeshift your injuries away before?"  
  
The abrupt change in subject startled Raven for a moment, but she didn't show it. Instead, she arched an aerobic eyebrow and said, "Try me."  
  
"Because the Hand assassin who jumped you and your contact wielded a magickal blade. The Hand are known for them – incapacitates anyone it cuts in the worst way possible for them in particular. In your case, it prevented you from dispensing with your own hurts. It was supposed to put you at a disadvantage so you'd be easier to defeat in battle. They're very particular about the way they take care of people – an organisation built on honour and tradition. That's why you were left alive enough to fight back. There's no honour in defeating a worthy opponent who isn't at least given the chance to defend themselves. Your reputation must have preceded you if they knew you liked a bit of fisticuffs. I removed the spell and augmented the natural process, allowing your body to do what it does best – get better."  
  
Raven tried very hard not to accept what she was hearing as true. However, it was difficult. Suspending disbelief for a second, a lot of what Agatha said made a strange sort of sense. Generally, Raven didn't like to get drunk, since it screwed with her balance-control, but it was like when she had succumbed to a few too many pick-me-ups and the world assumed a skewed kind of order she'd never been able to notice when sober. Hadn't she once heard something about the Hand's weaponry? The thing about the sword soundly familiar, but her memory was cloudy on the subject.  
  
She folded her arms in a manner that can only be described as belligerent. "Let's say I believe what you're telling me. Just hypothetically speaking, of course. How exactly am I supposed to pay you back for helping me like this?" Raven had had enough of debts for kindness. Erik's noose was still around her neck, and if it weren't for keeping him from her children she might have abandoned him and his stinking deal a long time ago, consequences be damned. She had no inclination to go setting up another debt to fall into when this one was finally repaid.   
  
And it would be repaid, someday. Raven was a shapeshifter. Longevity was another plus point of her mutation – she could fight the aging process where others couldn't. Erik, however, had no such genetic advantage. She was sure she could outlast the old fool, and when he was worm-food she'd be free of him and the suffocating 'contract' between them.  
  
Agatha sucked in air between teeth that were surprisingly even and white. "The magick told me that in the future I would find an… well, I suppose the word you could use is apprentice. Very loose translation, mind, but that's the gist of it. However, this apprentice will be off-limits to me. Alone, I won't be able to gain access to him or her without scaring them off completely. That's where you come in. You're going to bring this person to me and convince him or her that I can help where nobody else can."  
  
"And if I say no?"  
  
"Then, quite possibly, the world will end." Agatha smiled brightly, as if she'd just said there was jam to go with the scones for supper.   
  
"You're insane."  
  
"Aren't we all? I told you magick is vague. If you refuse to help me help this apprentice then I'm not entirely sure *what* will happen. The world could indeed end, or it could have no more bearing on events than a bluebottle you let fly out the window instead of squashing with a rolled up newspaper." She shrugged. "As I said, I'm not precognitive. And Irene's diaries, while helpful in interpreting what my own visions told me, were just as ambiguous on the issue."  
  
Raven looked at Irene, much good it did. "You *showed* her the *diaries*?"  
  
Irene had sunk back into her chair during the exchange between the two other women, and now looked as if she wanted to phase right through it, were such a thing possible. "She already knew about them. She knew how they came to be and what they were for. She even explained some of them to me. It seemed redundant to keep them from her."  
  
Raven snorted. It was a most unladylike sound, and Agatha said as much.   
  
"Fuck you."  
  
"Delightful. You really are a most amusing person to converse with, my dear."   
  
Raven's jaw tightened, and she exerted supreme willpower to keep her temper in check. Extending her hand, she said slowly, "Prove to me I can trust you. Give me the ruby. And no tricks."  
  
In answer, Agatha tossed the leather pouch onto the bed. Raven lost no time in opening it and removing the contents. The ruby was just smaller than her hand, one side multi-faceted, the other surprisingly straight, like some sharp tool had cut it.   
  
"The ruby of Cytorrak. Or one half of it, anyway," Agatha remarked, enfolding both hands back into the sleeves of her clothes. "A pretty trinket, but I doubt your man wants it for its aesthetic value."  
  
"He's not my man," Raven snapped, and because she was staring so hard at the gem, checking for damage or imperfections that might signal a fake, she missed the look of relief that immediately passed across Irene's face.   
  
Agatha's shoulders touched her ears. "Not my business. I think you'll find it's both intact and the genuine article, my dear. Rubies are resilient gems – the magickal kind even more so than usual. It's doubtful I could have put a dent in it even if I had wanted to."  
  
The sneer leaked out before Raven could stop it. "I thought you were supposed to be some sort of all-powerful witch?"  
  
"Everyone has limits, child. Even me. Why else would I need your help, or that of your companion?" Agatha tilted her head to one side, as if listening to a voice only she could hear. "You need to leave, soon. Get ready. Irene, if you'd come with me dear." She started for the doorway, beckoning with one finger.  
  
Raven almost snorted again at the old crone's manner. In other circumstances, she might have broken her teeth for speaking to her thus, but that Irene should take it surprised her. The Irene she had known was a strong-willed woman with a mind of her own, and for a second she wondered just how much had changed since she saw her last. The thought and its implications did not fill her with joy.  
  
"Actually, I'd like to stay here for a moment." Irene shifted in her chair like she was looking at Agatha, and the witch took a moment before nodding her reply.  
  
"All right, then. I'll give you two a moment alone, but please don't stall if you can help it. Like I said, I have limits. If Raven wants to get out of here in one piece then she must be ready." With that, she turned and left, closing the door behind her.   
  
The silence that ensued was stifling. Raven busied herself with studying the ruby again, unwilling to talk, or even acknowledge that Irene was 'looking' at her. A thick swirl of emotion clouded the air, and she ducked her head under it sullenly.  
  
It was the other woman who eventually broke the hush. "It's been three years, Raven."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Do they not make telephones in Bavaria?"  
  
"Erik - "  
  
"I don't care about Erik," Irene snapped, and then sighed, running a hand through her hair. The sleeve of her shirt caught on her sunglasses and she fixed them inattentively. "Three years is a very long time for no contact. I didn't know if you were dead or alive."  
  
Raven bit her lip, and despite everything she found herself surprised that it was whole and unblemished. The memory of putting her teeth through it was still fresh, and it earned a bitter grunt in light of the present conversation. "He's a bastard. For all he says that others have a chronic case of idealism, he's no better. If I'd let him know about you or Marie, he would've tried to recruit you on this ridiculous enterprise of his, or file you away somewhere to call on in the future, like he has his own children."  
  
"So you thought that by cutting all contact you'd keep us safe?" In case Raven had forgotten just how much like an accusation a question could be, Irene chose to remind her. "I had to adopt her, you know. They needed it to be official. I'm her legal guardian on all the paperwork. I waited for you to come back and finish signing the things, but she needed out of that orphanage, Raven. We couldn't wait any longer."  
  
"I understand."  
  
"No, I'm not sure you do." Irene grasped her cane again, bringing it onto her lap and running her fingers up and down its length. It was a nervous habit she'd developed years ago, and Raven raised her line of sight just enough to include the action.   
  
There was a long pause. When Irene spoke again, her voice was soft.  
  
"I wasn't just waiting for you to come back and sign the papers, Raven."  
  
At once, something sour clenched at Raven's stomach. "I wanted to - "  
  
"Not enough to actually come and see me, though. Not enough to come and see our daughter. Yes, I still think of Marie as ours – much good you've been at it so far. Motherhood never really was your strong suit, was it?" There was an ill-concealed bitterness to the words, and though the censure stung, Raven let it slide.   
  
"I…"  
  
"You what? Thought that it didn't matter? Thought that I'd be fine raising her on my own? I know our relationship was always… complicated because of this thing with Erik, but three years and no word?"  
  
Raven didn't answer. She couldn't.   
  
She'd met Irene after the pact with Erik had begun, and the early years of their friendship through to the beginning of their relationship had been comprised mainly of stolen moments and tiptoeing around deadlines – times when she had to be back at the castle, or whatever other base of operations he had that week. Originally, when he was worked from a Mississippi safe house, it had been simple enough. The bar where they'd first met was where they continued to meet, eventually branching out into other locations under the pretence of reconnaissance and searching for other mutants.   
  
Erik had thought Irene just some pawn Raven was using to further explore the 'mutant underbelly' of the city, and left them alone. Her power wasn't combat-orientated, nor useful to his wider design like that of others he'd 'enlisted', and so he left Irene alone where it counted. When he moved on and took Raven with him, she'd feigned breaking all contact with the precognitive mutant, not wanting her caught in the web of subterfuge she herself was such a significant part of.   
  
Yet, even in the face of all this, their 'holiday romance' still blossomed and grew. Raven, always the more experienced of the two, had taught Irene so many things in what time they had together, subtly influencing Erik to send her on missions either close to, or bypassing Mississippi so she could see her friend and, eventually, her lover. The forbidden nature of their encounters added jest to their relationship, until neither of them could deny that they had become so much more than friends who occasionally slept together to take the edge off.  
  
Then, just over three years ago, after one of Irene's visions led her to a small orphan girl with a latent x-gene, Raven had quite suddenly broken all contact for real.   
  
On some level, she was still at a loss to explain it. Nothing had really changed in her situation. She had simply woken up one day; the day after Erik accompanied her on an exercise under his 'Magneto' guise, and decided that things were progressing in a direction she wanted neither Irene nor their proposed adoptive daughter involved with. It hadn't even been the first time he went with her, and it certainly hadn't been the first time he stopped being Erik and became the Master of Metal. Memories of staring up at him on the bridge were as fresh today as they had been when she searched downstream for the remains of a deformed baby.  
  
What started out as simply a missed meeting with orphanage officials to finish signing adoption paperwork had extended, becoming a complete and utter blank wall of communication. Irene had no way of contacting her, and she made no move to initiate any contact of her own.  
  
Originally, Marie was supposed to have undertaken the name 'Darkholme' – perhaps as Irene's way of comforting Raven for the continued pain caused by the loss of her biological son. Now, however, she was Marie Adler, and Raven could not help the bitter tang in the back of her throat, as the suspicions of what her actions had wrought were finally confirmed.   
  
It was understandable that Irene was resentful. Raven considered, and decided that, had their positions been reversed, she would have already flown into a rage by now. Irene's composure bespoke the kind of calm and tranquil nature that had attracted her in the first place, and she averted her eyes to the far corner of the dark room.   
  
Irene sighed and leaned her head against the tall back of her chair. "Seeing what I've seen tonight, I know the kind of life you lead has gotten… more dangerous since I saw you last. If that's the kind of thing you were trying to keep us from then your intentions were noble enough, but… Raven, didn't you ever consider that I might want to make that kind of decision for myself? Or at least have the opportunity to discuss things with you? For Marie's sake, if nothing else. Do you know how difficult it was whenever she asked if Auntie Rae was going to come visit again?"  
  
"Irene, it wasn't an easy decision to make."  
  
"Doubtless, but you made it anyway. Without consulting me, or even broaching the subject with me first. Not that I would have left Marie in the home had I known what you were going to do, but it might have meant I could move on with my life instead of waiting around, wondering what the hell I did wrong to scare you away." She twisted the cane in her hands, bleaching her knuckles. "You were the one who sought me out, Raven. You pursued me. You started the friendship, you started the relationship, you started the adoption process, but I went along with it. I had a say in how things went. I could've said no at any time and stopped any single part of it before it went any further. But I didn't. You let me believe that I had a choice in the matter – that I had a voice in the relationship. But in the end the buck always stopped with you. You decided when and where we met. You decided when you wanted me to be more than just your covert mutant friend. You decided when you could run off into the sunset with Erik, leaving me here with a small child and no clue what was happening. You *always* decided."  
  
Raven's eyes played with the shadows, weaving them into a cobweb. Layers of dark encircled her cornea until she shooed them away. Her fingers bunched around fistfuls of bed-sheet.   
  
Irene's voice fell to a low murmur. "I thought you'd dropped me for him."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Erik, of course. The man you went home to every time you left here."  
  
For a second Raven just blinked, aghast at the very notion. Erik had once been her friend and confidante, and now saw himself as her employer and 'leader' in the fight against humanity, but at no point had she ever considered sharing a bed with him. There was too much history and too many secrets between them for a romantic liaison to ever have been a viable option, and she opened and shut her mouth like a goldfish with creosote in its bowl.   
  
"Never." It came out as a hoarse whisper. "I'd sooner drink paint stripper."  
  
"So you say. But what am I supposed to believe, Raven? Your word doesn't have much going for it right now."  
  
Raven wanted to reach out and take Irene's hands. She wanted to run her fingers over the blind woman's knuckles, circling the joint below her thumb like she used to when she was frustrated at having to leave and go back to Erik and his foolish mission. She wanted to, but she couldn't, because it wasn't her place anymore. And despite all she'd told herself when she decided not to see Irene or Marie again, that hurt most of all.   
  
Instead, she asked, "What do you want me to say?"   
  
"I don't know. I used to think I wanted you to come back and tell me it'd been all just some big misunderstanding – that you'd meant to come back but something beyond your control got in the way. Then I realised that one of my diary entries had spelled it out for me already. You weren't coming back, and that fact had been staring us both in the face for a long time. Every time we tried to decipher what those prophecies meant, we thought it was referring to something bigger than it was; when in actual fact, it was telling us that there wasn't going to *be* an 'us' for much longer."  
  
Raven kept her eyes fixedly in the corner, not daring to tear them away for fear of doing something that would make her weak, like she'd spent years teaching herself not to be. She knew she should be dressing and getting ready to leave like Agatha had told her to, but time seemed to have frozen, and all she could think of was not appearing as weak as she knew she would if she looked at this woman whose heart she seemed to have broken so spectacularly. Her motto for as long as she could remember had revolved around survival of the strongest; and if she understood what she was hearing, then survival was all she had left.   
  
"You made the rules, Raven," said Irene. "You made them, played by them, but neglected to explain them all to me. But tonight, the game got the better of you. Your own rules bested you, and you'd be dead right now if it weren't for Agatha."  
  
"And you."  
  
"Yes. And me. Which is why I'm telling you up front that you aren't in your game while you're under this roof, Raven. This is my home, the one I made for Marie and myself after you vanished. The rules here are mine, and you will play by them whether you like it or not. My rules. My decisions. My life."  
  
There was a bowling ball in Raven's throat, and regardless of how stupid she knew she was being, she couldn't make it go away. She'd thought that by never seeing Irene again, she wouldn't have to deal with the inevitable part of any relationship – the end; because much as she loathed to admit it, she'd come to care for Irene much more than even the father of her lost child, whom she'd sworn her life and heart to so many years ago. She'd stolen that back from him only to lose it again to the most unlikely of candidates, and now she didn't want it back again.  
  
"I understand."  
  
"What, Raven? What do you understand? Indulge me for a second and tell me what I'm trying to tell you. Tell me that you're not so out of synch with me and my little old world that you don't understand me anymore."  
  
Raven took a breath, willing herself to remain strong – cold, if she had to. "I understand that your life doesn't include me anymore. I understand that when I leave here tonight, you won't be waiting for me to come back again. I understand that you've… moved on. From me. From us. Like you said, your rules, your decisions, your life."  
  
"You're right. My life." A pause, and then a sharp intake of breath. "It *is* my life. And it's a damn stupid one, because it doesn't seem to work properly without you in it."  
  
"Excuse me?" Raven all but plucked her eyeballs from their sockets and swivelled them around.   
  
Irene's cheeks shone wet in the darkness. "It doesn't work, you idiot. I tried to make it – tried to jam everything into place, but it was like a jigsaw piece that didn't fit. I got on with things – enrolled Marie in school, got a job, paid my bills, voted in elections when they rolled around. I went shopping at each and every supermarket in this city, walked the length of every park finding playgrounds for Marie to play in. We ate out, we ate in, I drove, I walked, I spoke to passers by in the street, listened to preachers standing on their boxes in the mall, and investigated every TV channel and radio station trying to blot you from my mind. Sometimes it'd work, and I'd think I'd forgotten you, or at least what you meant to me. I'd be Irene the adoptive mother, Irene the minimum wage earner, or Irene the Billy Joel fan.   
  
"But then I'd have a vision of you on some mission or other, putting your life in danger, and I'd remember everything I'd tried so hard to stop thinking about. I'd remember how you used to make me feel – about myself and the rest of the world. I'd remember waiting to meet with you, and no matter what form you were in to everyone else *knowing* it was you, even without my powers. I'd remember that time you brought me chocolates and had to leave before they were all finished. I'd remember foreseeing your son taking a fall and having stitches in his knee, and the way you gripped my hand so tight when I told you about it. I'd remember waking up next to you and not having to reach for my glasses because you didn't *care* that I was blind, and so I didn't care, either. For the first time in my life I was happy with whom and what I was, and I wanted that back more than anything. I wanted *you* back more than anything, no matter what you'd done, and I'd spend hours trying to convince myself that you weren't coming back, and that even if you were I shouldn't take you back, because you'd hurt me so much and made me feel like a fool for letting you get under my skin that way but it didn't matter but it did and I got so *confused* that I half wished you'd stay away just so I wouldn't have to deal with the different ways seeing you would make me feel and I… I… " She gulped, and wiped at her face with the back of one trembling hand. "And now here you are. And here I am. And God help me, but I don't want you to go again, Raven. I think… I think that if you did, I wouldn't be able to pick myself up again a second time."  
  
Raven swallowed the rapidly expanding bowling ball and bit the bullet, leaning across and gripping Irene's fingers so forcefully she was half convinced the cane would splinter beneath them. It was like she was trying to prove to them both that the other was there, and when Irene remained solid she loosed a small noise that could have been anything from a stifled war-cry to a choked moan.  
  
And then they were kissing, and everything came flooding back so bright and clear and vivid she couldn't understand why she'd left at all. Irene tasted of mint toothpaste and herbal tea and salty tears. Her scent was a mixture of lavender soap and some kind of citric shampoo. It filled Raven's nostrils and she inhaled it, trying to bottle the fragrance so she could carry it with her always.   
  
"I'm sorry," she said when they broke apart, for once not caring how weak apologising made her sound. "I'm so, so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was protecting you…"  
  
"Don't." Irene pressed her lips against Raven's forehead, and something wet and brackish dripped onto her nose. "Just don't. I don't care anymore, Raven. I did once, but… it's just not important anymore."  
  
"It *is* important," Raven replied, reaching out to hold the body she'd woken nights wishing to touch. "I need you to know why."  
  
Irene sniffed. "But there isn't time. You have to leave. The Hand… Agatha can only shield the house from them for so long. She doesn't show it, but it's hard for her. They've been looking for you. The moment she lets the shield drop, they'll find you. You have to leave before that happens – "  
  
"Then I'll come back. Or you'll come to me. We'll *make* time for each other. You were right, Irene. Three years *is* a long time. Too long. It'll always be far too long, and I can't bring it back, but I can fill in the blanks. That's something I can do. You have to believe me; I'll do it this time. No more waiting. No more silence."  
  
"Raven."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I think… I think I…"  
  
"I know."   
  
Irene's glasses tumbled to the floor as their lips met again, and neither one of them quibbled that implicit knowledge neither time nor distance could change.  
  
=========  
  
Raven dressed quickly and efficiently, declining Irene's awkward offer of an overcoat for protection against the threatening rain. The downpour had stopped while she was unconscious, but fat grey clouds sat like a row of Buddha statuettes in the sky.   
  
"He can't know I was here with you," Raven explained simply, not needing to elaborate on the 'he'.   
  
Irene nodded, but 'watched' with uncharacteristically blatant anxiety anyway.   
  
Finally, Raven took the leather pouch containing the ruby and looked for her boots. They were nowhere in the room, and Irene mused that Agatha must have taken them away when tending to Raven's wounds.   
  
"Although where they could be if not in here…"  
  
"Come on." Raven headed for the door, pouch in hand, trying to remember where her pistol was and how many bullets it had left. If she was lucky, she could sneak away without having to use any and be gone before the Hand could get a lock on her location. "Let's find the old crone. I don't think I ever finished my conversation with her and I'm certain she doesn't think she's finished with me."  
  
The landing of the house was just as she remembered it, right down to the threadbare brown carpet and dull-varnished wooden handrail. Raven spared a moment to glance from left to right as she exited the bedroom, recognising that her short stay had been in the ill-furnished guest quarters. Everything seemed to be the same, right down to the smallest detail, like Irene had given up on interior design and just vacuumed around her memories.   
  
However, not everything was exact. On the far wall, overlooking the staircase was something she didn't recognise – a large picture frame with imitation gold edgings. It tilted slightly on its hook, bottom frame touching the plaster, a splash of colour against unimaginative beige. In it, a square sheet of slightly crumpled paper covered in garish green, red and yellow handprints glared out of the world. At first there was no discernable pattern to the mishmash of fingers, thumbs and palms, but gradually one could see an emergent outline in amongst the spatters – more of a plan for a later artwork, really. A preparation piece, with subtle mistakes and delicate errors, rubbed at ineffectually by tiny, sticky hands. The green shaped around in circles, twining thumbprint leaves in and out of pinkie-spikes. Blossoming out of them came graceful blue petals, each drooping against the two-dimensional stem. The bottom right hand corner held a patch of inharmonious scrawl that Raven's keen vision picked out as 'Marie Adler, aged 4½'.   
  
She stared at the finger-painting. Stepping forward with mouth slightly open, she drank in the simple pleasure of admiring a child's work. Her child's work. A child that would have been hers, and possibly was still in spirit, if not legality…  
  
She almost missed the creak of a door opening, and the pad of bare feet to her left. When a high-pitched sniff cut the silence, her eyes darted to the thatch of dark hair that had come through the door between herself and Irene.   
  
The child was facing away from Raven, towards her adoptive mother. One fist was rammed into her left eye, rubbing tiredly, the other by her side. She held one of those ridiculous My Little Pony toys, but it had lost half its mane and was covered in pink swirls of dry nail polish. Her hair was pulled up into two bristly pigtails that had obviously come loose as she slept, each tied with another piece of pastel Pony merchandise. By comparison, her pyjamas were emblazoned with the likeness of a man in a grey and black bat costume, cowl replete with little pointed ears. A small band-aid peeked out at her elbow, evidence of some mishap. She was a dichotomy of images – one half tomboy, the other little girl with faerie fancies and Barbie dolls.   
  
"Irene, I had a bad dream," she said in an accent as Southern as iced tea on a Shenandoah front porch.   
  
Raven was stood behind the child, and so couldn't see her face, but she knew without doubt whom it was. The knowledge surged into her throat, constricting her windpipe, and for a second she could do nothing but stare at the back of this little person she'd sat with in the orphanage and promised to take home with her. Her disguise then had been an austere woman, with steel-rimmed glasses and a stern frown. Memories of the girl with an odd white stripe to her bangs glaring right back at her replaced the present, and she blinked until Marie spoke again.  
  
"Irene, why're you dressed? Did you have a bad dr - ?"  
  
It was a snap decision. Raven simply reached out and squeezed Marie's shoulder, finding the magic nerve that rendered her unconscious in less than a second. She caught her as she fell, plastic pony slipping from nerveless fingers and clattering over the edge of the landing. The noise seemed inappropriately deafening, somehow.  
  
"She… she can't know I was here," she explained when Irene crouched by her side. "She can't know about me, Irene. It's… it's too…" She stumbled over how to communicate how the past thirty seconds, from leaving the bedroom to squatting here now, had placed a resolve in her head never to let Erik know about this single mutant child, and never to let Marie know what kind of life lay in the activation of her x-gene. The gene was latent, and perhaps it would stay that way. There had been no vision of its activation yet, so far as she knew. Any hope of keeping her from this 'war' was one Raven was willing to grasp. She needed no more young blood on her head.  
  
Irene nodded, not correcting the assumption that it was possible to keep Marie from that kind of life. She took Marie from Raven' arms, picking her up and carrying her back into her own room. Raven glanced rainbow wallpaper and a still-present white streak, before rising and descending the staircase alone.  
  
Agatha was waiting at the bottom. "So slow," she chided. "I trust you've had enough time to say what needs saying?"  
  
"Fuck you."  
  
"I'll take that as a yes."  
  
Raven narrowed her eyes, raw emotion giving way to cold dislike. It was the way she usually dealt with things that threatened to swallow her. Either that, or go kick the proverbial crap out of a punch bag. "Where are my boots and my gun? Give them to me. Now."  
  
From the folds of her clothes Agatha produced the thirty-eight. Raven took it and checked the barrel, surprised to find it reloaded to full capacity. She arched an eyebrow at the old woman, but Agatha touched the side of her nose with one finger.   
  
"Gift horses, my dear." Her cloak gave up the defaced pony Marie had dropped and she placed it carefully on a nearby sideboard, as if illustrating her words.   
  
Raven looked absently at it, and then did a double take when she realised what exactly the open book Agatha had placed it on was.   
  
Irene had not always been blind. As a child, she had been sighted as the next person, but upon the emergence of her mutant ability she had fallen into what her family could only assume was sudden madness. It hadn't been, as was attested by the clarity of her mind today, and the swiftness of the upturn in her condition. In truth, she had been abruptly and violently introduced to the world of mutation by a barrage of indiscriminate visions of the future. People she neither knew nor wanted to filled her head and her voice for hours upon hours of muddled litany, convincing those around her of seizures when they all clamoured to use her as their mouthpiece at once.  
  
When she was sufficiently recovered from this initial onslaught, she picked up a pen and began to write down anything and everything she could remember about them. To those around her, this writing was her salve – her path back to sanity. It was the way she could get the strange images, voices and words out of her head. Then it became her obsession. Then her downfall.   
  
She lost her sight at the tender age of fifteen, but kept writing in haphazard, compulsive script even when she was pronounced clinically blind. She wouldn't allow anyone to touch the thick manuscripts in case they tried to get rid of them. She raved about an order she was still trying to figure out, and wouldn't listen to reason when told that the books meant less than nothing now that she could no longer see them. If anything, those around her marvelled at the legibility of her handwriting after losing her sight, and chose not to listen when she tried to explain how she could marshal her power enough to 'see' the page in front of her. Her brother moved to New York rather than stay in a house with the 'freak' his sister had become, and her parents took to bringing meals to her rather than endure the rage that invariably ensued when prying her downstairs to the dinner table.  
  
Gradually, the urge to write her visions down left Irene, and with it went the bulk of her temper. Her precognition limited itself to isolated incidents and immediate happenings. By the time she wrote them down, they had already occurred, and so she took to writing only what she knew was a part of a far-flung future she would never see. Sometimes she drew pictograms; others she wrote entire paragraphs. A single image could spark pages of hastily written musings, or less than a handful of words she didn't understand. She once attempted to paint a mural on her bedroom wall; a ravaged scene of strange, pyramid-like shapes around a lone figure wreathed in shadow and blue fire.   
  
When it came time for her to leave home, her family were all too happy to bow out of their strange daughter's life, and so she'd taken her diaries and moved south, to Mississippi, and a life beyond their narrow world view.  
  
When Raven first heard about these diaries, she'd attempted to help decipher them, but the task had proved too great even for her, and she balked at the idea of showing such a private matter to Erik. She knew that not knowing what her visions told her was one of Irene's biggest grievances in life, but no matter how hard either of them tried, they almost always drew a blank until it was too late, and whatever thing Irene had predicted had already come to pass. Until tonight, when Agatha mentioned them, Raven had thought the books an unknown commodity of neither use nor ornament to anyone.  
  
The plastic pony straddled the centrefold of the undisclosed volume, two pale pink hooves on either page. Just below it, on the right hand side, was a beautifully rendered sketch of a face – female, dark-skinned, perhaps in her mid to late teens. Curtains of dark hair hid part of the left cheek and eye, but the expression behind was one of inquisitiveness and compassion, all plaited into full lips perked into a genuine smile. In the empty space next to her floated a pair of almond shaped eyes, devoid of pupils, but nothing else. Apart from the eyes the sketch dominated the page, and below was printed a single word in blocky ballpoint lettering – 'Amanda'.   
  
Raven couldn't remember seeing it before, and so presumed Irene had drawn it at some point in the last three years they had been apart. Certainly, she would've remembered something that detailed and poignant. There was air of contentment in the girl's face – the kind of acceptance of oneself that Raven had been striving for her entire life, and the floating eyes intrigued her. What was *their* significance, she wondered. Who was – or would be – Amanda, and what was her part in the complicated future Irene was so convinced would someday arrive?  
  
"Penny for them?" Agatha's voice dragged her back into reality, and she tore her eyes from the strange sketch.  
  
"Where are my boots?" she demanded instead of answering, a little vexed her reverie had been interrupted. "Give them to me."  
  
"Oh, but yours are so much nicer than mine."  
  
"Now."  
  
Agatha lifted her eyes to the ceiling. "Honestly, some people. Here." Gesturing to the side of the doorframe in which she was stood, she revealed the wayward boots. "I took them because the ruby needed a magickal shield all of its own, and your gun needed replenishing. Satisfactory?"  
  
Raven slid her feet in and tested the grip of the soles. Yes, these were her boots. No matter what Irene said, she still wasn't sure she trusted this Agatha character, and viewed her more as a potential enemy than ally.   
  
"We never finished talking about this debt I supposedly owe you."  
  
"Yes we did." Agatha moved into the front hall, and then through it into the living room.   
  
Raven paused a second, looking again at the sketch in the diary before following. "I think you're mistaken, old woman. I'm not - " She stopped short, glancing around. Apart from the doorway she had just come through, there was no other way in or out of the room, but Agatha had nonetheless vanished. A quick search turned up nothing so much as a scrap of grey hair, and Raven's dislike soured further. "That slippery, conniving…"  
  
"Raven?" Irene called to her from the staircase, and Raven opened her mouth to launch another vent against the self-styled witch – right before the large bay window that made up most of the front wall exploded inward.  
  
Raven defended her face against the shower of glass by diving behind the sofa, glad to have kept the thirty-eight in hand after all. Glass, metal and wood cascaded across the room, and a score of armed shapes burst through the new opening. Each bristled with an array of edged weaponry, and Raven cocked the pistol, ready to fire on the nearest of the hooded figures.   
  
A glint of metal caught her eye, and she wondered whether the ornamental swords above the equally ornamental fireplace could be pulled from their backing as an impromptu weapon.  
  
_So much for Miss Thing and her fancy magickal shielding -_  
  
A shrill scream echoed from the staircase, and Raven wasted no more time. In a single, fluid movement she vaulted the sofa and fired the gun into a dark clad figure. The Hand assassin went down without a murmur, and then all hell broke loose in the little suburban living room.   
  
Rather than empty the pistol in a rush and lose all her bullets at once, Raven assumed a defensive position. At once, three of the assassins dropped down on her from admirable jumps over pieces of furniture. She ducked under the attack of the first with a speed that impressed even herself, clamping onto his sword wrist and using him as a missile to hurl at another.   
  
Two operatives momentarily taken care of, Raven whirled back out of range, as a sword that was all too familiar in design made a cut into the polished wooden floorboards. Springing back, she then smashed the butt of the gun into the swordsman's face, finishing the move by planting two feet in his chest. The assassin crumpled to the floor, where she kicked him upside the head, rendering him unconscious.   
  
Picking up the fallen man's sword, Raven brandished it at the two righted assassins.   
  
They advanced on her with a confidence that said they understood what they were up against. They had been primed and prepared for their target's characteristics.  
  
It didn't matter. When another scream resonated from the stairs, all the strategy in the world, all the armaments, all the magick couldn't save them from Raven's fury. She entered the fray with the kind of wild abandon that couldn't be predicted, felling one as he was still leaping into the air and putting a bullet at the from gut to base of the other's spine when he tried to take the sword from her.   
  
New figures poured in through the open window, choking the path between Raven and the front hall. Snarling, she threw herself at the closest, raking a hole in his belly and using the elevation his falling body gave to hurdle over the head of the assassin directly behind. Someone got in a lucky shot as she flew overhead, scoring a line of red down her side, but she turned her plunge into a shoulder roll and came up with gun ready to blast him. As before, there was no quarter given in this fight. To the Hand it was an unknown property – she either killed them, or she took their place in the grave.   
  
Irene was balanced on a middle step. Behind her, a hooded figure pressed a small dagger to the soft flesh of her throat. Irene was trembling, and Raven mounted the first stair with an unconcealed growl. She half considered allowing her teeth to morph into a more savage countenance – certainly she could use any extra weapon she could muster – but the hiss from Irene's attacker stopped her short.  
  
"[Give us the gem, gaijin,]" he said, using the same Japanese dialect as the dead assassin from the playground, "[or she will die.]"  
  
Raven's grip on the sword-handle tightened. This was one of innumerable reasons she'd always kept Irene from the other half of her life. This was why no personal connection was allowed in her sort of existence. She could only hope that none of these bastards found Marie before she could rip their throats out.  
  
The clap of hands from the top of the staircase surprised her, insofar as it seemed to surprise the assassin holding Irene. He turned slightly, keeping one eye on Raven, whilst simultaneously seeing what newcomer dared to announce their presence in the combat zone via a simple handclap.   
  
Agatha's craggy features were highlighted in the illumination cast by the skylight and a strange blue-green glow around Marie's doorframe. She viewed the happenings below with an expression akin to distaste, and raised an imperious hand.   
  
"[Drop her,]" she said in perfect Japanese, like she'd just got off the plane from a lifetime amongst Tokyo's skyscrapers.  
  
Composing himself quickly to this new individual, the assassin replied, "[Give us the ruby. You are warned, I shall kill her without hesitation.]" To emphasise, he pressed the blade closer. A thin trickle of blood traced a vertical line over Irene's collarbone.   
  
Agatha tutted, shaking her head. "[No, you won't.]" She waved her hand, and at once the operative flew backwards over the banister.   
  
Irene gasped, as the dagger jangled to her feet and slid off the step after him.   
  
Raven was at her side in an instant, holding her up against the dagger's weakening effects. She glanced up at Agatha, mouth wide, as the old woman walked sedately down the stairs, flicking her hands like she was conducting an orchestra. With every movement, another assassin would find himself picked up and hurled through the broken window, or through the front door – which opened all of its own accord.   
  
One operative attempted to launch himself at the two younger women on the stairs, eyes wide with the very real risk of failure. He found himself divested of his sword and skidding across the slick grass of the front garden before he could draw breath for a battle cry. Another released a volley of shuriken, each undoubtedly coated in poison. The tiny throwing stars halted in mid air, hovering for a second. Agatha made some complex gesture with her hands, and they lined up into single file, following the thrower out of the window.   
  
Raven watched all this with nothing short of astonishment, attempting to describe the scene to Irene when the blind woman asked what was going on.   
  
"I can't See!" she said in a panicked voice, and Raven heard the capital letter.  
  
"The sword… dagger… it's magickal, remember?" she said, with some degree of amazement at her own words. "It's probably blocking your power."  
  
Agatha cut her off then by going to stand in the open doorway and raising her voice. "[Know this, Hand. You are beaten. This house and those in it are under my protection. Attack them again and I will not be so lenient. The ruby of Cytorrak is out of your reach so long as it is in the possession of those here, wherever they may go.]"  
  
"[We are not defeated,]" shouted back one of the assassins, defiant.   
  
"[Actually, yes you are.]"  
  
"[Our clan shall return - ]"  
  
"[Come anywhere near this place again and I shall do far worse than I have this night. I am Agatha Harkness, majò known to your elders. I saw the Hand build itself up from nothing, and if I am crossed I will invoke every connection and power I have to see it razed thus again. Know me and my majùtsu, and fear it. As it works this hour, so will it work a thousand hours, in a thousand places, on a thousand lives for a thousand grievances caused by the Hand.]"  
  
A wash of blue-green energy shimmered like gossamer across the doorway and broken window. Agatha shut the door just as a piercing screech cut the air, and turned to Raven and Irene with a grimace.  
  
"Ugh. Nobody needs to see that."  
  
"You… you defeated them," said Raven, not quite believing her own words, nor trusting her own eyes.   
  
Agatha wiped her hands on her long sleeves. "Indeed. I said I would, did I not? Come, Raven Darkholme, it's time for you to make your escape. The Hand won't be bothering this place or that ruby again, of that you can be sure. The clan elders and I have an… understanding; one that I called on tonight for you." Her small eyes danced with something dark and potent.   
  
"Look, this debt I owe you - "  
  
"When the time comes you'll know that what I said tonight is right, and you'll understand that it's in both our interests for you to repay the kindness I've shown you here. Now please get going so Erik can pick you up and I can get on with cleaning this place. It's a pigsty."   
  
"Irene?" Raven looked to the other woman, but Irene pushed her away, supporting herself on the banister.   
  
"Agatha will take care of it. Just go, Raven."  
  
"Yes, Agatha will take care of it," said the witch in question, steepling her hands. "I'd advise a quick getaway, my dear, before young Marie wakes up. And don't worry about the damage. So far as any of the neighbours are concerned, everything was the responsibility of a bunch of hooligans looking for some arsonist fun."  
  
Raven looked at them both, choosing a less pedantic path than asking how exactly the neighbours would draw that conclusion. She stepped away from Irene, bit her lip, bounded back for a last fervent kiss, and then leaped the last few steps to the floor.   
  
The door opened for her, and the magickal energy let her go through it with a noise like soap bubbles popping. Scattered across the lawn and road were mounds of empty black clothing, and a thick cloud of vapour hung on the air. Overhead, a deep rumble of thunder sounded, heralding her course away from that little, unassuming house where a witch, a seer and an innocent stayed.  
  
The sky was dark with clouds, but the horizon had lightened to a dull shade of grey. The dawn was coming. Most sensible people would be asleep now, or smacking alarm clocks that had woken them for work. Most sensible people knew nothing but peace in the wee hours of the morning.  
  
Raven Darkholme was not most sensible people.  
  
And the world thanked God for that.   
  
=========  
  
FIN.  
  
=========  
  
NOTES:  
  
Fight scenes helped immensely by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel The Lost Slayer: Part Two: Dark Times, by Christopher Golden.   
  
Since I'm not really up on my comic knowledge, most Hand info here is courtesy of the X-Men 616 short story Peace Offering, by Michael Stewart. That is, where I haven't made it up, of course. I laugh in the face of continuity and put ice-cubes down accuracy's trousers.  
  
Raven's 'Fat effin' chance' comment is courtesy of Beth in Knights of Ghosts and Shadows, by Mercedes Lackey.  
  
For anyone who's interested (all two of you besides me), the My Little Pony that Rogue dropped is most likely Firefly, since she was one of the first pink ponies produced available by 1984 with feet that were not excessively close together like the original six prototypes.   
  
The musing on ornamental swords is a vague side-fling to Pirates of the Caribbean: Legend of the Black Pearl, and if you've seen that movie, you'll understand the reference. Braid that hair, Jack; braid it! 


End file.
